Every Sunday morning at Blackburns' Chapel in Todd, N.C., breakfast is served before communion.
Congregants gather around tables fashioned from old pews, passing plates among neighbors. Between bites, they sing hymns, pray together, read Scripture, listen to a sermon, and linger in conversation.
Along with Sunday worship, the congregation gathers around the table each Wednesday evening for dinner and Bible study. A food pantry remains open around the clock, and the church partners with neighbors to distribute fresh produce from its garden to the community.
Through field education, students at Duke Divinity School step beyond the classroom and into churches and other ministry settings where they begin testing what they've learned against the complexities of real life. For Savannah Smith, a Rural Ministry Fellow pursuing a Master of Divinity (’27), that journey has led to Blackburns', a small rural congregation where she could dive right into the community—a place where ministry happens as naturally over coffee and breakfast as it does from a pulpit.
"So much of what we do here is around the table," Smith said. "It has to do with food and feeding people and eating together. And that's one of the best ways, I think, to connect theology to a real-world context."
For a while, Smith imagined a very different future. "Ministry was never something that was on my radar," she said. "I always thought I would be an artist or designer of some sort."
As an undergraduate at Appalachian State University, Smith studied religious studies alongside her other coursework and found herself captivated by the classroom.
"I fell in love with every class I was a part of," she said. "God came alive to me in the classroom."
She quietly dreamed of attending Duke Divinity one day but struggled to imagine herself as a pastor.
"I was really afraid of being that person in the pulpit," she said. "I didn't want to let people down. I didn't want to represent Christ in a bad way. I was afraid that I was the wrong person for the job."
After moving home, she eventually began serving in children's and youth ministry. It was her pastor who finally persuaded her to attend the annual Convocation & Pastors' School gathering at Duke Divinity. Standing in Goodson Chapel for the first time while hundreds of United Methodist pastors sang "Here I Am, Lord," something shifted.
The visit confirmed that Duke could be the right place to explore her calling, to learn more.
"I felt the Spirit telling me I wasn't alone," Smith said. "It was evident just from the workshops I sat in on that the professors at Duke cared just as much about their students' spiritual formation as their education. This was my dream."
Now working in a field education placement as a student at Duke, Smith says the classroom and the church placement work together to help her understand her faith and calling.
"The classroom has helped me to articulate what Christ's church should aim to look like, while serving at Blackburns' has helped me to be part of Christ's church.
"I wanted to be somewhere where I could get my hands dirty," she said. "I've definitely found that here."
Earlier in the semester, Smith had spent time studying philosopher Simone Weil, whose writing challenged Christians to rethink the relationship between charity and justice. Then, while riding in the car with her field education supervisor, the Rev. Laura Byrch, a woman called the church with nowhere to go after Hurricane Helene had damaged the home she had been renting.
Smith watched as Byrch listened before offering solutions. She asked questions. She made phone calls. Before the drive was over, another ministry partner had identified two tiny homes where the woman could stay.
"Within one car ride, Laura was able to find housing for someone who no longer had anyone to turn to," Smith said. "This was not an act of charity, but of justice. In that moment I could see the words of Simone Weil come to life."
She describes Byrch as "the embodiment of Matthew 25," someone whose ministry extends far beyond Sunday mornings.
"When Jesus says to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to her it's not charity. It's an act of justice. It's what everybody in humanity deserves," Smith said.
Just as much as classroom learning, transformative field education moments and an authentic, present mentor have shaped Smith’s Duke education.
"I think authenticity is one of the biggest things that makes a great mentor," Smith said. "Sometimes it's not always about just teaching. I think I learn the most from experience and watching, and so being able to do work alongside her has been awesome."
As a Rural Ministry Fellow, Smith knows she'll serve a United Methodist congregation in western North Carolina after graduation. Not long ago, that future felt overwhelming and scary, but it’s starting to feel sacred.
"Duke Divinity has definitely shown me that we all have the responsibility to carry out Christ's mission," she said. "It's helped me to think about my vocation less as this duty and more as this gift. I get to go and I get to be with the people of God, and I get to be a part of how God is already at work in those places."
Field education has been a part of that journey from fear to trust.
"I can say that field education has given me a confidence that I don't know if I ever thought that I would have before starting Duke," she said. "It gives me the opportunity to mess up. It gives me the opportunity to get comfortable with my gifts in the way that I can lead best. It has allowed me to love my vocation and not just be scared of it."
Looking back, Smith smiles at the younger version of herself who wondered whether she belonged in ministry at all.
"I was afraid that I was the wrong person for the job," she said. "But God equips the unequipped."
